Editors' Review

As much as we may like to pretend otherwise, there are lots of people--or more accurately, companies--tracking our every move on the Internet. Most of the time the information that's being collected is for marketing purposes, not malicious ones, but even that can be a bit creepy. Ghostery is an unobtrusive add-on for Firefox that shows users exactly which trackers are present on a given Web page, making it much easier to control who's gathering information about you.

The program's interface is quite user-friendly, with the add-on appearing as a small Pac-Man-style ghost in Firefox's status tray. When Ghostery detects information-gathering scripts on a Web page, a link appears that shows the number of trackers found. Clicking on this link provides the name of each tracker and links to Web pages with more information about the companies in question, including descriptions and popularity rankings. Ghostery can also optionally show an alert bubble in the upper right corner of a Web page that lists the trackers that have been found. The program's interface makes it easy to block each individual tracker if desired, ensuring that information about your Internet usage isn't going to anyone you don't trust. Overall, we found Ghostery to be both unobtrusive and quite informative, and we recommend it to those who are concerned about keeping their Web surfing private.

Ghostery is free. As with most add-ons, it doesn't have a Help file, but it's very easy to figure out. Ghostery installs and uninstalls without issues. We recommend this program to all users.

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Publisher's Description

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From Evidon:
Ghostery alerts you about the web bugs, ad networks and widgets on every page on the web.Web bugs are hidden scripts that track your behavior and are used by the sites you visit to understand their own audience.

What's new in this version:

Version 2.6.0.1 has added company affiliations and affiliation filtering to options.

Blocks a lot of egregious behavior by unscrupulous Internet jackals. Unobtrusive, once the expansion windows close

Cons

Makes it harder to get to a lot of things that you want to do (for instance, it take several extra clicks to get to Words With Friends in FB).

Popup dialog gets in the way until it finally shrinks away.

Summary

I feel more secure with Ghostery running, but I just wish it was more in the background.

Updated on Aug 8, 2013

I wish it were more intuitive. If one is not conversant with all of the subtle nuances between the various terminology, (cookies, trackers, beacons, analytics, etc.), this can be confusing when it comes time to decide whether or not to block something. This limits the usefulness to non-experts, who probably need it the most.

You can turn off automatic opening of the pop-up.Click on the ghost to open the pop-up, then on 'Options' (the cog wheels icon), then on 'Advanced'. Uncheck the 'Show alert bubble' box.You will then see the pop-up only when you click on the ghost.

After just a week of use, I'm not sure what Ghostery does, or how it works. The UI is not particularly intuitive, but was ultimately revealed after clicking on a notice screen. Still, it isn't clear what the impact will be of blocking the elements that are presented as options to allow or deny.

I have found that some site content is blocked, then I have to use Trial & Error to re-enable the content.

When you click on a page and load it, the tracking stuff had already loaded and tracked your action....then you have to round up the horse after he's left the barn. And, how do you know which tracker is bad and which tracker is OK? It doesn't give you any info about that.

Summary

Ever wonder how Ghostery is free? Evidon is savvy enough to know that it can't make money solely by blocking tracking cookies. So, the company had a smart and somewhat devious idea: Why not take its trove of data and sell it to the very companies Ghostery users are blocking?

After all, the thinking goes, many ad networks sell their advertisements via real-time bidding, so they often lack a clear idea of where their tags are appearing. In short, online ad networks are just as hungry for information about web users as they are for data about themselves. Ghostery gives them that information.

This gives Evidon a clear target market and even clearer plan of attack: Use Ghostery users to build the tracker database, then turn around and license the data to ad networks

Sometimes the user must take responsibility for identifying which blocked tracker is disabling some feature on their favorite sites. For example some login submissions may need a specific tracker to function. I had this happen on several sites and it was because the tracker "Ominiture" was not allowed and once I told Ghostery to allow it I could login. It took some trial and error to figure this out because the site had some 8 trackers being blocked. Needless to say this is NOT CONVENIENT.

Summary

This product does what it claims in terms of blocking trackers. However, it would be more convenient for the user if the Ghostery development staff provides a way of identifying which trackers might be required on a given site to ensure that site's full functionality.

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